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On May 10, the Chinese major search engine, Baidu, was sentenced for pirating two online novels owned by Shanda’s digital litterature distribution arm. The Shanghai Luwan District People’s Court ordered Baidu to compensate the games maker by paying RMB500,000 (US$ 76,807.51).

According to local newspapers, “The court stated that Baidu has provided links to pages that hold pirated content from the two books and enabled access to pirated content from the novels through its WAP service.” “As an Internet service provider, Baidu indirectly infringed on the copyrights of Shanda Literature as it did not remove unauthorized literary works from its website immediately after being informed by Shanda,” according to the verdict handed down by Luwan District People’s Court on Tuesday.

Shanda Literature is part of Shanghai-based Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, an interactive entertainment media company. And this legal fight is part of a more global economic battle. Shanda wants to develop its litterature activity and is rumoured to buy shares of online file-sharing website docin.com. If true, it would make Shanda a potential competitor of Baidu Wenku (Baidu Libary), according to the online publication hexun.com.

Baidu announced that it will lodge an appeal.

Shanda is also suing Baidu in the same court for piracy of another five novels and has demanded compensation of more than RMB1 million (US$ 153,601.43). Baidu has already been condemned by another court for non respecting copyright on music content (See article on CSN).

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